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The 42nd Infantry Division  Historical Film Footage

Dachau after liberation

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 Imperial War Museum - Film Archive

Transcript

Here, as at Belsen, men knew hunger. Men became weak. Men fell sick until they died where they lay on the floor. In hut 30 alone, there is recorded, for example, 72 deaths within 24 hours.

The Dachau concentration camp, northwest of Munich, Germany, was the first regular concentration camp the Nazis established in 1933. About twelve years later, on April 29, 1945, US armed forces liberated the camp. There were about 30,000 starving prisoners in the camp at that time. The film seen here was edited from original footage shot by Allied cameramen as liberating troops entered Dachau. It was discovered in the archives of the Imperial War Museum in 1984 and was never completed.